What have we come to

joeguevara · 22-02-2020 12:06AM

lawrencesummers wrote: »

The Garda commissioner won’t last long if SF form a government.

He’s 2 years into a 5 year contract of 250k per annum. The minimum to get rid would be 750k but he could sue for unfair dismissal and get another 500k on top. Wouldn’t look good to waste money especially as that is what they have blamed other parties of. If they had evidence of gross misconduct they would already have raised it. We have gone through 3 Garda commissioners with big pay offs. So they would be stymied.

Feisar · 22-02-2020 12:11AM

There were TD's from the three main parties on a radio show as I was driving down the road this evening. Yer "up the ra" lad was saying how they respect/follow the institutions of our state. The FF/FG lads missed a trick. They should have requested he condemn the killing of Jerry McCabe. We could have listened to the tramp dance around the issue.

I appreciate they were a necessary evil in NI however it is perfidious to pretend to be anything other than the political wing of the IRA.

JamesM · 22-02-2020 12:33AM

Feisar wrote: »

There were TD's from the three main parties on a radio show as I was driving down the road this evening. Yer "up the ra" lad was saying how they respect/follow the institutions of our state. The FF/FG lads missed a trick. They should have requested he condemn the killing of Jerry McCabe. We could have listened to the tramp dance around the issue.

I appreciate they were a necessary evil in NI however it is perfidious to pretend to be anything other than the political wing of the IRA.

They were not a necessary evil in NI. After the British army stopped the attacks on Catholics in 1969, there was no need for the IRA. They just went on a spree of murder and mayhem. This led to Bloody Sunday in 1972 and all the other atrocities on both sides.

Professor Moriarty · 22-02-2020 12:34AM

JamesM wrote: »

They were not a necessary evil in NI. After the British army stopped the attacks on Catholics in 1969, there was no need for the IRA. They just went on a spree of murder and mayhem. This led to Bloody Sunday in 1972 and all the other atrocities on both sides.

No. Paratroopers shooting civilians led to Bloody Sunday.

growleaves · 22-02-2020 12:39AM

Eric Cartman wrote: »

Our problem occured when we opened up education for people (hold your pitchforks for a second) , in the past we had a lower standard of education, people left to work when times were bad and some returned when times got better a healthy enough cycle. As we gradually handed out free education and particularly reduced cost degrees we have ended up breaking that cycle, when things get bad, our educated skilled labour leaves, the taxation increases which are used by successive governments to keep the country afloat create a barrier which makes it unattractive for those educated skilled workers to return however the generous welfare state attracts unskilled migrants which shore up numbers but increasingly cause a detraction from the economy.

we're effectively breathing out oxygen and in carbon dioxide and with successive boom bust cycles the brain drain continues until eventually the unskilled and the elderly will cause so much demand on the system that the skilled workers cannot afford to support them.

We need a points based system to reject en masse the lower income earning immigrants and all of the welfare dependent ones or the non contributing family members of low to median income earning ones and at the same time decrease taxes to encourage our educated natives back in. There is no good reason at all to allow anyone or their family into this country if their (as a whole unit) contribution to the PRSI system isn't positive.

Interesting post.

I'd say that the success of employers in defeating collective bargaining among the unskilled and semi-skilled plays a part in the cycle you allude to.

When people hear collective bargaining they think of trade unionism but there is a wide spectrum of formal and informal methods of collective bargaining. Actuaries have accreditation and guild protection (of a sort, not quite sure how it works). Business executives have their links to hockey and rugby clubs and place their network of friends into positions of influence. In-house corporate attorneys report to other attorneys (not to some manager in the bureaucracy and not by accident). In Montrose, and the entertainment industry generally, its usually well-placed family connections. Etc., etc.

I think this bears emphasis because on Boards we seem to have a large proliferation of the only kind of middle-class person who doesn't use collective bargaining and is in fact blissfully unaware of it: the IT worker. In time, wages will be driven down in IT and in fact that's already happening from what I've observed.

Anti-racism makes collective bargaining impossible for unskilled workers. If an Irish construction worker objects to a Romanian labourer taking a day rate at a 500% discount, no one will accept that his objection is free from prejudice. There is an assumption of guilt attached to such accusations.

Why am I going on about all this....because the money that could be negotiated from employers comes out of taxation instead. The middle-class give a subsidy to the lesser-skilled classes in the form of welfare, then resent them and we all go around in circles.

Eric Cartman · 22-02-2020 12:42AM

growleaves wrote: »

Interesting post.

I'd say that the success of employers in defeating collective bargaining among the unskilled and semi-skilled plays a part in the cycle you allude to.

When people hear collective bargaining they think of trade unionism but there is a wide spectrum of formal and informal methods of collective bargaining. Actuaries have accreditation and guild protection (of a sort, not quite sure how it works). Business executives have their links to hockey and rugby clubs and place their network of friends into positions of influence. In-house corporate attorneys report to other attorneys (not to some manager in the bureaucracy and not by accident). In Montrose, and the entertainment industry generally, its usually well-placed family connections. Etc., etc.

I think this bears emphasis because on Boards we seem to have a large proliferation of the only kind of middle-class person who doesn't use collective bargaining and is in fact blissfully unaware of it: the IT worker. In time, wages will be driven down in IT and in fact that's already happening from what I've observed.

Anti-racism makes collective bargaining impossible for unskilled workers. If an Irish construction worker objects to a Romanian labourer taking a day rate at a 500% discount, no one will accept that his objection is free from prejudice. There is an assumption of guilt attached to such accusations.

Why am I going on about all this....because the money that could be negotiated from employers comes out of taxation instead. The middle-class give a subsidy to the lesser-skilled classes in the form of welfare, then resent them and we all go around in circles.

Collective bargaining is the first step down the union slippery slope, your labbour rate is based on volountary participation and your own skillset and experience. The idea that a rugby club protects your income is laughable.

James Brown · 22-02-2020 12:42AM

Feisar wrote: »

There were TD's from the three main parties on a radio show as I was driving down the road this evening. Yer "up the ra" lad was saying how they respect/follow the institutions of our state. The FF/FG lads missed a trick. They should have requested he condemn the killing of Jerry McCabe. We could have listened to the tramp dance around the issue.

I appreciate they were a necessary evil in NI however it is perfidious to pretend to be anything other than the political wing of the IRA.

Yer man is a tool.
The whole point of the IRA was fair and equal representation with the ultimate goal of the British leaving. That's my understanding. Now its political as it is in the south.

Agreed. They need deny it because the IRA were an illegal organisation.

growleaves · 22-02-2020 12:48AM

Eric Cartman wrote: »

Collective bargaining is the first step down the union slippery slope, your labbour rate is based on volountary participation and your own skillset and experience.

The slippery slope to what?

Eric Cartman · 22-02-2020 12:52AM

growleaves wrote: »

The slippery slope to what?

to unionisation which increases consumer prices, stifles productivity, discourages company expansion in that ragion, takes money from ordinary workers to fund fat cat union officials and hurts chances of workers heing promoted to managerial levels

lawrencesummers · 22-02-2020 12:55AM

JamesM wrote: »

They were not a necessary evil in NI. After the British army stopped the attacks on Catholics in 1969, there was no need for the IRA. They just went on a spree of murder and mayhem. This led to Bloody Sunday in 1972 and all the other atrocities on both sides.

Yea.
Sure.
Yea they did nothing wrong since 1969 alright.
And I’m Meghan markel.

lawrencesummers · 22-02-2020 12:56AM

joeguevara wrote: »

He’s 2 years into a 5 year contract of 250k per annum. The minimum to get rid would be 750k but he could sue for unfair dismissal and get another 500k on top. Wouldn’t look good to waste money especially as that is what they have blamed other parties of. If they had evidence of gross misconduct they would already have raised it. We have gone through 3 Garda commissioners with big pay offs. So they would be stymied.

A lot of IF’s, but if SF do get in they May not care what the cost is.

JamesM · 22-02-2020 01:03AM

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

No. Paratroopers shooting civilians led to Bloody Sunday.

They wouldn't have if the IRA weren't active. There was no need to be active - ambushing the police and the army that, at that time, were protecting the Catholic population.
Before you attack me, I do not condone it. It was a terrible day - and I'm old enough to remember it very clearly - it was horrific and we all hated the paras and the arrogant way they treated the civilians afterwards.

lawrencesummers · 22-02-2020 01:04AM

JamesM wrote: »

They wouldn't have if the IRA weren't active. There was no need to be active - ambushing the police and the army that, at that time, were protecting the Catholic population.
Before you attack me, I do not condone it. It was a terrible day - and I'm old enough to remember it very clearly - it was horrific and we all hated the paras and the arrogant way they treated the civilians afterwards.

So Bloody Sunday is the IRA’s fault.

I’ve heard it all now.

Professor Moriarty · 22-02-2020 01:10AM

JamesM wrote: »

They wouldn't have if the IRA weren't active. There was no need to be active - ambushing the police and the army that, at that time, were protecting the Catholic population.
Before you attack me, I do not condone it. It was a terrible day - and I'm old enough to remember it very clearly - it was horrific and we all hated the paras and the arrogant way they treated the civilians afterwards.

There was endemic discrimination in NI at that time which wasn't being addressed in any meaningful way and people weren't going to take it anymore. If there had been parity of esteem then there would have been a much smaller IRA - if it had existed at all. Britain created a second terrible beauty that Sunday.

Feisar · 22-02-2020 01:24AM

JamesM wrote: »

They were not a necessary evil in NI. After the British army stopped the attacks on Catholics in 1969, there was no need for the IRA. They just went on a spree of murder and mayhem. This led to Bloody Sunday in 1972 and all the other atrocities on both sides.

I don't understand.

hatrickpatrick · 22-02-2020 01:42AM

GreeBo wrote: »

The evidence is that Ireland outperformed the rest of the euro zone.

What other evidence would you expect? In any country, in any scenario, how would you go about proving cause and effect of economic policy?

Unless you have some method of resetting to the start, implementing a different policy and observing the difference, it would seem you are just being contrarian.

It's irrelevant. Macroeconomics has become entirely disconnected from average quality of life for a variety of reasons, and this is exactly what FG's problem is - obsessing over numbers and graphs on paper and not actually listening to people when huge, huge numbers of voters tell them that their lives have become worse, not better, as a result of economic "recovery" which has seen everything becoming more and more expensive without an increase in take-home pay which even begins to cover it.

As I've said ad nauseum in this thread already, when an entire generation was able to afford a higher standard of living on a part time income during the worst years of austerity than they are now on full time career incomes during a period of macroeconomic recovery, the obvious conclusion is that macroeconomics don't tell us sh!t about conditions on the ground which are actually having a direct impact on peoples' spending power and quality of life.

So, the macroeconomic figures and graphs all point to Ireland being in a good place. It. Does. Not. Matter. Ordinary people's lives are harder now than they were ten years ago because of rampant in key areas of the cost of living.

Here's another analogy: If your house is burning down around you and you're suffering third degree burns while your thermometer tells you that your house is a comfortable 21 degrees C, do you conclude that the evidence of your burns and the fact that your house is now a pile of ash is false, and the thermostat was correct?

No, you conclude that the thermometer was faulty in some way and therefore not capable of telling you what was really happening inside your house at the time that it showed a good temperature while you got badly burned by the inferno.

This is a situation like that. If the macroeconomic figures are telling us that things are good, while average lived experience is getting worse and worse over time, then the macroeconomic figures and formulae are worthless in determining anything about how citizens should feel or indeed how citizens should vote.

Abstract numbers and graphs which take into account gigantic factors which have very little direct impact on day to day life say everything's rosy. Individual human beings say that they cannot afford the cost of rent, groceries, heating and electricity bills, insurance and other basic costs of living without being financially crushed. The latter is all that matters when it comes to determining whether government policy has or has not been a success.

Peoples' quality of life has diminished as the cost of living has outstripped income, and ordinary voters literally couldn't give a bollocks about anything else when it comes to voting on economic issues. They don't care if the macroeconomic figures are solid, they don't care if the stock market is up, they don't care about GDP, they don't care about indices and graphs. They care that what they take home on payday after a hard week's work doesn't go as far as it used to before FG took office in 2011. And that is literally the only metric upon which average voters are going to judge a government's performance on economic policy.

quokula · 22-02-2020 02:29AM

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

It's irrelevant. Macroeconomics has become entirely disconnected from average quality of life for a variety of reasons, and this is exactly what FG's problem is - obsessing over numbers and graphs on paper and not actually listening to people when huge, huge numbers of voters tell them that their lives have become worse, not better, as a result of economic "recovery" which has seen everything becoming more and more expensive without an increase in take-home pay which even begins to cover it.

As I've said ad nauseum in this thread already, when an entire generation was able to afford a higher standard of living on a part time income during the worst years of austerity than they are now on full time career incomes during a period of macroeconomic recovery, the obvious conclusion is that macroeconomics don't tell us sh!t about conditions on the ground which are actually having a direct impact on peoples' spending power and quality of life.

So, the macroeconomic figures and graphs all point to Ireland being in a good place. It. Does. Not. Matter. Ordinary people's lives are harder now than they were ten years ago because of rampant in key areas of the cost of living.

Here's another analogy: If your house is burning down around you and you're suffering third degree burns while your thermometer tells you that your house is a comfortable 21 degrees C, do you conclude that the evidence of your burns and the fact that your house is now a pile of ash is false, and the thermostat was correct?

No, you conclude that the thermometer was faulty in some way and therefore not capable of telling you what was really happening inside your house at the time that it showed a good temperature while you got badly burned by the inferno.

This is a situation like that. If the macroeconomic figures are telling us that things are good, while average lived experience is getting worse and worse over time, then the macroeconomic figures and formulae are worthless in determining anything about how citizens should feel or indeed how citizens should vote.

Abstract numbers and graphs which take into account gigantic factors which have very little direct impact on day to day life say everything's rosy. Individual human beings say that they cannot afford the cost of rent, groceries, heating and electricity bills, insurance and other basic costs of living without being financially crushed. The latter is all that matters when it comes to determining whether government policy has or has not been a success.

Peoples' quality of life has diminished as the cost of living has outstripped income, and ordinary voters literally couldn't give a bollocks about anything else when it comes to voting on economic issues. They don't care if the macroeconomic figures are solid, they don't care if the stock market is up, they don't care about GDP, they don't care about indices and graphs. They care that what they take home on payday after a hard week's work doesn't go as far as it used to before FG took office in 2011. And that is literally the only metric upon which average voters are going to judge a government's performance on economic policy.

The thing is that stats are based on reality, not some isolated anecdotes and misery junky stories shared on social media by perpetual moaners.

To give some more real figures - SIMI stats show new car sales in Jan 2020 were up by over 50% from 2012. That's 50% more families who have enough disposable income to buy themselves a car that couldn't do that 8 years ago.

The same stats showed that light commercial sales doubled, probably an even more telling sign of a buoyant economy for tradespeople, with a market less impacted by uncertainty around diesels, electric vehicles etc than private sales.

To take another stat, in 2011 Dublin Airport carried 18 million passengers while in 2019 it carried 32 million. That's some combination of a hell of a lot more people who can afford holidays, mixed with a lot more people being attracted to visit here from abroad too.

I couldn't find absolute figures for retail sales but they've been in positive growth every year so clearly they've been doing a lot better in 2019 than 2011 too. Yet another sign that people typically have more disposable income to enjoy life with.

Housing is going to get more expensive when so many more people have so much more to spend. Building is picking up pace however and we've already seen prices level off over the last year.

Anyone who's trying to depict the country as some kind of hell hole where nobody can afford to live a decent life really needs to get some perspective on what it's like in pretty much every other country. There's a reason why Ireland is so often near the top of international quality of life measures, such as the UN's Human Development Index which puts us third on the planet behind Norway and Switzerland.

sameoldname · 22-02-2020 03:10AM

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

It's irrelevant. Macroeconomics has become entirely disconnected from average quality of life for a variety of reasons, and this is exactly what FG's problem is - obsessing over numbers and graphs on paper and not actually listening to people when huge, huge numbers of voters tell them that their lives have become worse, not better, as a result of economic "recovery" which has seen everything becoming more and more expensive without an increase in take-home pay which even begins to cover it.

As I've said ad nauseum in this thread already, when an entire generation was able to afford a higher standard of living on a part time income during the worst years of austerity than they are now on full time career incomes during a period of macroeconomic recovery, the obvious conclusion is that macroeconomics don't tell us sh!t about conditions on the ground which are actually having a direct impact on peoples' spending power and quality of life.

So, the macroeconomic figures and graphs all point to Ireland being in a good place. It. Does. Not. Matter. Ordinary people's lives are harder now than they were ten years ago because of rampant in key areas of the cost of living.

Here's another analogy: If your house is burning down around you and you're suffering third degree burns while your thermometer tells you that your house is a comfortable 21 degrees C, do you conclude that the evidence of your burns and the fact that your house is now a pile of ash is false, and the thermostat was correct?

No, you conclude that the thermometer was faulty in some way and therefore not capable of telling you what was really happening inside your house at the time that it showed a good temperature while you got badly burned by the inferno.

This is a situation like that. If the macroeconomic figures are telling us that things are good, while average lived experience is getting worse and worse over time, then the macroeconomic figures and formulae are worthless in determining anything about how citizens should feel or indeed how citizens should vote.

Abstract numbers and graphs which take into account gigantic factors which have very little direct impact on day to day life say everything's rosy. Individual human beings say that they cannot afford the cost of rent, groceries, heating and electricity bills, insurance and other basic costs of living without being financially crushed. The latter is all that matters when it comes to determining whether government policy has or has not been a success.

Peoples' quality of life has diminished as the cost of living has outstripped income, and ordinary voters literally couldn't give a bollocks about anything else when it comes to voting on economic issues. They don't care if the macroeconomic figures are solid, they don't care if the stock market is up, they don't care about GDP, they don't care about indices and graphs. They care that what they take home on payday after a hard week's work doesn't go as far as it used to before FG took office in 2011. And that is literally the only metric upon which average voters are going to judge a government's performance on economic policy.

I think you might have a problem of perspective. I'll give you an example:

I was in my early twenties when the crash happened and just before had moved to a new city and got a new job. The pay wasn't great and the rent was still celtic tiger-ish, so basically I lived in a suburb sharing a house, an hour from work and my rent took up a large enough portion of my income.
Luckily, the job that I had just started was stable enough through the recession that I wasn't let go. I ended up being promoted in my first year which came with a sizable increase in pay. In fact, I got a pay increase every year I worked there.
On the other side of the equation, my rent was reduced substantially after my first year. The year after that I moved into an apartment which was literally smack dab in the middle of the city. I was still sharing but my rent was even lower. By 2011 I was paying €200 a month in rent to live just off Eyre Square in Galway and my pay had increased by over a third.

From my personal point of view, the recession was a good time for me, out every weekend, loads of money for holidays and things were getting cheaper every year. But I was basically living in an artificially cheap world. I didn't have to worry about my €300,000 house now only being worth half that. I didn't have to worry about losing my job and not being able to pay my mortgage.

I know some people who were even luckier, had managed to save up a deposit and secured a mortgage on property which was valued less than the cost of building the bloody thing, never mind the value of the land it sat on!

So yeah, roll on a few years and everything has flipped around. I don't own a home and I don't know if I ever will. And I guess if I viewed that time as "normal", I'd be pretty pissed. But it wasn't normal, and the reason everything is so messed up now is directly related to how cheap everything became back then. And now, most of the people who were worrying about the value of their home and if they could pay the mortgage are doing better and now I'm the one who's worried that I won't be able to pay my rent.

So maybe that could be one explanation for how people "feel"? Feelings don't change figures though.

Shefwedfan · 22-02-2020 08:24AM

Feisar wrote: »

There were TD's from the three main parties on a radio show as I was driving down the road this evening. Yer "up the ra" lad was saying how they respect/follow the institutions of our state. The FF/FG lads missed a trick. They should have requested he condemn the killing of Jerry McCabe. We could have listened to the tramp dance around the issue.

I appreciate they were a necessary evil in NI however it is perfidious to pretend to be anything other than the political wing of the IRA.

They where not a necessary evil, they killed people to seemingly free Ireland. Ireland is still the exact same

Plus they still around killing, stealing and beating up people. So what is the goal of them now?

Mary Lou trying to make out they don’t exist, she is having a laugh

whisky_galore · 22-02-2020 08:40AM

Shefwedfan wrote: »

They where not a necessary evil, they killed people to seemingly free Ireland. Ireland is still the exact same

Plus they still around killing, stealing and beating up people. So what is the goal of them now?

That diesel isn't going to launder itself you know.

We need our brave freedom fighters to do this patriotic duty.

Shefwedfan · 22-02-2020 08:42AM

whisky_galore wrote: »

That diesel isn't going to launder itself you know.

We need our brave freedom fighters to do this patriotic duty.

Exactly, Some of IRA originally where freedom fighters, then and now it just a shower of scumbags doing illegal stuff to line their pockets, all with Sinn Fein backing

wrangler · 22-02-2020 08:48AM

sameoldname wrote: »

I think you might have a problem of perspective. I'll give you an example:

I was in my early twenties when the crash happened and just before had moved to a new city and got a new job. The pay wasn't great and the rent was still celtic tiger-ish, so basically I lived in a suburb sharing a house, an hour from work and my rent took up a large enough portion of my income.
Luckily, the job that I had just started was stable enough through the recession that I wasn't let go. I ended up being promoted in my first year which came with a sizable increase in pay. In fact, I got a pay increase every year I worked there.
On the other side of the equation, my rent was reduced substantially after my first year. The year after that I moved into an apartment which was literally smack dab in the middle of the city. I was still sharing but my rent was even lower. By 2011 I was paying €200 a month in rent to live just off Eyre Square in Galway and my pay had increased by over a third.

From my personal point of view, the recession was a good time for me, out every weekend, loads of money for holidays and things were getting cheaper every year. But I was basically living in an artificially cheap world. I didn't have to worry about my €300,000 house now only being worth half that. I didn't have to worry about losing my job and not being able to pay my mortgage.

I know some people who were even luckier, had managed to save up a deposit and secured a mortgage on property which was valued less than the cost of building the bloody thing, never mind the value of the land it sat on!

So yeah, roll on a few years and everything has flipped around. I don't own a home and I don't know if I ever will. And I guess if I viewed that time as "normal", I'd be pretty pissed. But it wasn't normal, and the reason everything is so messed up now is directly related to how cheap everything became back then. And now, most of the people who were worrying about the value of their home and if they could pay the mortgage are doing better and now I'm the one who's worried that I won't be able to pay my rent.

So maybe that could be one explanation for how people "feel"? Feelings don't change figures though.

Yea, during the celtic tiger I warned a young friend about all the money he was wasting 'partying' and he now quotes it back to me as he tries to buy a house, even scrape together a deposit.
It was never easy for young peopleto buy a house, but they are unreasonable now to expect the government to throw money at them.
My friend enjoyed the boom and should've been in a position to buy cheap houses

growleaves · 22-02-2020 10:23AM

quokula wrote: »

The thing is that stats are based on reality, not some isolated anecdotes and misery junky stories shared on social media by perpetual moaners.

To give some more real figures - SIMI stats show new car sales in Jan 2020 were up by over 50% from 2012. That's 50% more families who have enough disposable income to buy themselves a car that couldn't do that 8 years ago.

You don't know who has seen an increase in disposable income and who went into debt to buy a new car. Commuters have to have vehicles of a certain age to meet insurance requirements - its non-negotiable for many people.

To take another stat, in 2011 Dublin Airport carried 18 million passengers while in 2019 it carried 32 million. That's some combination of a hell of a lot more people who can afford holidays, mixed with a lot more people being attracted to visit here from abroad too.

There is a tourist boom obviously but that doesn't mean a rise in wages in the hospitality sector.

You're looking at statistics and interpreting them according to your assumptions.

quokula · 22-02-2020 10:36AM

growleaves wrote: »

You don't know who has seen an increase in disposable income and who went into debt to buy a new car. Commuters have to have vehicles of a certain age to meet insurance requirements - its non-negotiable for many people.

There is a tourist boom obviously but that doesn't mean a rise in wages in the hospitality sector.

You're looking at statistics and interpreting them according to your assumptions.

All the statistics across every sector line up in the same direction. You have to be willing to make some wild leaps of faith to try and interpret them differently.

Regarding car sales for example, you're saying people are going into more debt. You don't know that, but even if they are it implies that people have more confidence to commit to a payment schedule, which still all points to them being in a much better position.

You're also assuming 100% of extra passengers in Dublin are foreign tourists, that seems unlikely. And even if it were true, all the money those tourists spend doesn't disappear into thin air. If hospitality workers aren't earning more (I have no stats to say whether they are or aren't), then there's a lot more people in jobs and fewer unemployed thanks to the expansion of the sector, and that matters.

jd1983 · 22-02-2020 10:45AM

quokula wrote: »

There's still a good chance that brexit will result in a hard border, yet I don't blame Simon Coveney and FG for the basket case that's UK politics.

It's similarly ridiculous to give FG credit for the UK and US (our 2 largest trading partners) exiting recession earlier than euro zone countries which benefited Ireland more than the other euro zone countries.
The UK and US were Ireland largest trading partners well before Kenny became taoiseach.

Shefwedfan · 22-02-2020 10:46AM

So how is Mary Lou getting on with forming a government?

FrancieBrady · 22-02-2020 12:06PM

Shefwedfan wrote: »

So how is Mary Lou getting on with forming a government?

According to the news there, 'parties are still meeting with SF.'

Wanderer78 · 22-02-2020 12:08PM

Shefwedfan wrote:

So how is Mary Lou getting on with forming a government?

SF more than likely won't be in government, ffg will see to that

Brendan Bendar · 22-02-2020 02:02PM

Wanderer78 wrote: »

SF more than likely won't be in government, ffg will see to that

Whoooooy?

Apparently there has been a huge vote for ‘change’.....:eek:

Wanderer78 · 22-02-2020 02:03PM

Brendan Bendar wrote: »

Whoooooy?

Apparently there has been a huge vote for ‘change’.....:eek:

ffg wont allow that, normal service will resume soon

What have we come to

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